"As for the lunar lander, it is a priority of the Trump administration. It is possible that, if a different president were to come into office in 2021, NASA's priorities may be reset toward Mars rather than the Moon, or more narrowly focused on studying Earth and helping to solve the climate change issue."

I would make jokes about Alabama here but considering I do know the people who work at both Houston Office, Alabama Office and JPL - I can say almost all of them are exceptional candidates.

The main exception being Jim Bridenstine who is best described as an Elementary School Dropout, who knows about as much science as a dodo bird.

NASA engineers are all extremely competent. Though the reason there is a major facility in Alabama is pure politics.

We also know already that this project will have a mandate to spend money on big aerospace contractors that like Shelby and no mandate to produce a spacecraft.

The fact it is in Alabama, in this case, is irrelevant - even if it is politics. The people hired there with the exception of the moron in charge are top-notch.

That is until Trump decides we need politically appointed scientists, then he will demand them to make "Coal Powered Rockets using Holy Water protected Heat Shielding"

"This holy Water heat shielding is certified by the Church to withstand 1 million degrees Celcius or the Fires of Hell, I can guarantee it will work!" - Trump University Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering.

The coal powered shouldn't be a problem. Coal gasification produces hydrogen and methane as part of the mixture, so either a hydrolox or metholox rocket could be run off (properly refined) coal gas. It's a terrible idea for environmental and economic reasons, but it would technically work.

Somehow I don't think anything of this will ever fly anyway. And I also think that nobody really cares for doing an Apollo-on-steroids style of mission. The political support for this is fragile, the costs will have a bad tendency to run out of control and it will be shot down at the earliest opportunity. I really pity the engineers who have to work on this and probably know just too well that it will all be for nothing in the end.

What SpaceX is doing seems almost crazily ambitious but at least it makes sense when it succeeds while THIS only makes sense for those who profit from it and who probably are totally happy with nothing coming out of it in the end because then they can rake in the money without having to deliver.

Senator Shelby is 85 years old... methinks he'll be confined to the Infernal Regions well before the SLS ever leaves the ground. So where will that leave Alabama?

That's the thing, if Shelby was pushing for new and innovative research projects to be performed in Alabama, things that actually have a future, it would be better for everyone (except the current contractors). So we can't even say he's doing what's best for his state.

Marshall has contractors proposing their own solutions for several fixed-cost contracts, while Houston is devising a design specification for the ascent element to be delivered on cost-plus contracts. The challenge for Marshall as overall project manager is to make all these pieces interoperable.

For example, the ascent element, transfer element, and Gateway refueling element have to agree on which propellants they will use, despite NASA being very reluctant to tell the fixed-cost bidders which propellants their proposals should use. If anything, Houston will probably drive this decision, because they will be dictating the design of the ascent element and selecting the proposal for the Gateway refueling element. Huntsville may just have to select a transfer stage that fits Houston's architecture.

The only piece where Marshall will be able to run the show is the descent element, because it's the least dependent on the other pieces, and it's also the heaviest piece, so its performance will set the mass budget for the ascent and transfer elements. They can be bold and select a hydrolox descent element from Blue Origin, or they can go with a more conservative proposal.

I would make jokes about Alabama here but considering I do know the people who work at both Houston Office, Alabama Office and JPL - I can say almost all of them are exceptional candidates.

The main exception being Jim Bridenstine who is best described as an Elementary School Dropout, who knows about as much science as a dodo bird.

NASA engineers are all extremely competent. Though the reason there is a major facility in Alabama is pure politics.

We also know already that this project will have a mandate to spend money on big aerospace contractors that like Shelby and no mandate to produce a spacecraft.

The fact it is in Alabama, in this case, is irrelevant - even if it is politics. The people hired there with the exception of the moron in charge are top-notch.

I know NASA has quite capable engineers and this isn't meant to knock them, but ... I do wonder if they’d have an easier time recruiting elite talent if it didn’t mean having to live in Alabama.

(Of course, they might also have an easier time if they could honestly tell recruits their work would actually put people in space someday...)

The Huntsville/Decatur area isn't really that Alabama-ish, almost but not exactly to the same extent that Austin is an outlier in Texas. There are plenty of transplants, and it's like any other place in America which has a highly educated workforce.

I would make jokes about Alabama here but considering I do know the people who work at both Houston Office, Alabama Office and JPL - I can say almost all of them are exceptional candidates.

The main exception being Jim Bridenstine who is best described as an Elementary School Dropout, who knows about as much science as a dodo bird.

NASA engineers are all extremely competent. Though the reason there is a major facility in Alabama is pure politics.

We also know already that this project will have a mandate to spend money on big aerospace contractors that like Shelby and no mandate to produce a spacecraft.

The fact it is in Alabama, in this case, is irrelevant - even if it is politics. The people hired there with the exception of the moron in charge are top-notch.

I know NASA has quite capable engineers and this isn't meant to knock them, but ... I do wonder if they’d have an easier time recruiting elite talent if it didn’t mean having to live in Alabama.

(Of course, they might also have an easier time if they could honestly tell recruits their work would actually put people in space someday...)

The Huntsville/Decatur area isn't really that Alabama-ish, almost but not exactly to the same extent that Austin is an outlier in Texas. There are plenty of transplants, and it's like any other place in America which has a highly educated workforce.

I like visiting Huntsville. I think Austin, or Charlotte, are good comparisons.

But still, when NASA is recruiting, even Houston sounds more appealing to a lot of engineering students. And I hate Houston.

(Houston is a swamp with no zoning laws. That turned out to be a great idea. Someone got away with building entire neighborhoods in a dry lake deliberately built for flood control, and then the residents were shocked when Harvey flooded it... but I digress.)

Hopefully Shelby sees that the writing is on the wall for SLS, and is looking instead to pick up work for MSFC on the transfer and descent stages.

The whole Artemis moon landing program is dependent on SLS, or rather was specifically designed around SLS's capabilities and limitations. If you remove SLS, you'd change everything about Artemis.

Both Artemis and SLS are designed around Orion. SLS can be replaced quite easily, but Orion is rather more difficult to replace.

If you remove Orion, then you HAVE to change everything about Artemis because no other vehicle can, at the moment, get crew BLEO. That leaves Orion in a safer position than SLS.

SLS can be replaced by anything that can lift Orion to LEO and be refueled there, or by dedicated orbital tugs, or by SuperHeavy with an expendable upper stage. All of these still work with Orion and the Gateway even if they mean the gateway isn't necessarily optimal.